Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 380
Id. at *7. The court further opined that “several of the plaintiffs’ proposed topics lack the
required particularity” but that “the overbreadth of individual proposed deposition topics
will be of no consequence” as long as the questions are limited to matters concerning
identifying the parties responsible for the alleged WARN Act violations and matters
related to supporting their single employer theory as well as “any other theories or
factual development relevant to the claims or defenses asserted in this case.” Id. at *9.
Class actions involving the WARN Act sometimes trigger class communications issues.
A prime example in 2022 involved layoffs at Twitter. In Cornet, et al. v. Twitter, Inc.,
2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 225424 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 14, 2022), the plaintiffs, a group of
former employees subject to several layoffs, filed a class action alleging that the layoffs
did not comply with the federal WARN Act and California Worker Adjustment and
Retraining Notification Act. Id. at *1-2. The defendant filed motions to compel arbitration
and to strike the class allegations, which were pending with the court. The plaintiffs
subsequently requested a protective order requiring the defendant to give notice of the
instant action due to class members’ severance packages, which included a release of
claims. The defendant argued that notice was not necessary as the former employees
all signed arbitration agreements that included class action waivers. The court granted
the motion. It found that a since the defendant was offering the severance agreements
containing a general release as part of the layoff package, a notice would ensure that
any communications regarding the severance or the release of claims would not be
misleading by omitting material information about a pending lawsuit. For these reasons,
the court granted the plaintiffs’ motion.
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
